Speakeasy reporter Barbara Chai is traveling to Dharamsala, India, this week for a private audience with His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

In the U.S. and Western countries in general, Buddhism seems largely misunderstood.

Don’t believe me? Okay, ask any non-Buddhist to name a single Buddhist festival or holiday.

That’s what I’m talking about.

There are organizations that have deep, long-lasting ties with the East, that do an excellent job of teaching and promoting Buddhism (in New York, the Tibet House and the Dharma Drum Center are strong examples), but by and large, much of the Buddhism we’ve been exposed to in the West, when we’ve been exposed to it at all, comes to us via popular culture.

In last week’s episode of “Saturday Night Live,” comedian Andy Samberg played a “Rude Buddha” who made lewd jokes and mockingly recited Buddhist-like quotes. The skit poked fun at the notion of a Buddha that’s offensive and sexually crude because the Buddha so obviously isn’t these things, right? Funny, ha ha. Okay, so there’s some easy irony that can be mined there. But you have to consider that it would have been an entirely different skit had it been about Judaism, Islam or Christianity. There wouldn’t have been such a skit because mocking those religions and their deities would have been too sensitive, too fraught with danger of offending too many people. With these faiths, when some high-profile people have gone there, it hasn’t been pretty.

Okay, there was a Tim Tebow meets Jesus skit on SNL not long ago, but you get where I’m coming from.

So why did “Rude Buddha” go down without so much as a whimper or, as the skit satirized, the sound of one hand clapping? Why the double standard for Buddhism?

It’s partly because we don’t know enough about Buddhism. In the U.S., we haven’t been ingrained with the thought that Buddhism should be respected and treated like any other religion.

In our society, Nirvana is less associated with Buddhism, and more associated with Kurt Cobain.

On the hit show, “Lost,” there were recurring Buddhist themes, including the Dharma Initiative (dharma means many things and has significance in Hinduism too, but generally, it’s understood by Buddhists as the teachings of the Buddha).

On “Lost,” Hurley’s winning lottery numbers — 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42 – add up to 108 and have to be entered into the computer in the hatch every 108 minutes. As it turns out, the number 108 is sacred in many schools of Buddhist thought, including Tibetan. Some scholars say the 1 stands for one thing, 0 for nothing, and 8 for infinity. Tibetan malas (rosaries) have 108 beads and the Tibetan Kangyur (Buddhist canon) has 108 volumes. Other schools of Buddhism believe there are 108 earthly desires to overcome on the path to enlightenment. And in India, the equivalent of 911 for emergency calls is 108! Hopefully, I won’t be needing to phone those numbers, however sacred, over the next week.

There are many pop cultural ambassadors to Buddhism, especially Tibetan Buddhism in large part because of the Dalai Lama’s popularity. For many of them, their faith and Buddhist study have remained strong over the years, and many seem to be serious devotees who are, admirably, in it for the long haul. Richard Gere is one of the most high-profile celebrities associated with Buddhism and is a longtime supporter of Tibet, as are the Beastie Boys.

During Tiger Woods’s press conference to address his infidelities during his marriage, the golfer said he was raised Buddhist and that he had drifted from it; Buddhism, he said, has helped his recovery (he’s still waiting for it to help him win more majors). Director Oliver Stone, in a commencement speech given at U.C. Berkeley in 1994, said “Buddhism in this country is not really understood; it’s regarded as sort of quaint, it seems to be an old-fashioned religion. But it isn’t, really. It’s a very active one and has a place in the modern world.”

In Hollywood there have been films about the Dalai Lama’s life too: Brad Pitt starred in “Seven Years in Tibet,” based on mountaineer Heinrich Harrer’s autobiography about being imprisoned in India during WWII and befriending the Dalai Lama as a teenager. In 1997, Martin Scorsese directed “Kundun,” a biopic about the Dalai Lama.

So it would seem there’s strong enough devotion in Hollywood, and if not to the Buddhist way of life, then certainly to the Dalai Lama’s life. But a major film about Buddhism hasn’t been made in the past decade, and when evaluated next to the Judeo-Christian tradition in America, Buddhism is still very much a marginal, alternative belief system here.

Part of that is because, as a percentage of the population, there aren’t that many Buddhists in America. That makes Buddhist ideas marginal. And it makes Samberg’s “Rude Buddha” funny.

In a few hours, I’m going to be somewhere where the numbers are different.

About Speakeasy

Speakeasy is a blog covering media, entertainment, celebrity and the arts. The publication is produced by Barbara Chai and Jonathan Welsh with contributions from the Wall Street Journal staff and others. Write to us at speakeasy@wsj.com or follow us on Twitter at @WSJSpeakeasy or individually @barbarachai.